Lemuel Abbott is believed to have been born in Leicestershire in 1760. He was the son of the Reverend Lemuel Abbott and his wife Mary. In 1775 at the age of 14, Abbott was apprenticed to the painter Francis Hayman, after whose death the following year, he returned to his parents and probably continued to study portrait painting independently. It has been suggested by a number of authorities that he may have completed his studies with the great painter Joseph Wright of Derby. He married a Roman Catholic woman named Anna Maria in about 1780 and moved to London to establish his own portraiture studio. He added the name Francis to his own and was quickly overwhelmed by commissions. In the period 1788 to 1800 he showed 15 male portraits at the Royal Academy. He portrayed many diplomats, government officials, colonial governors and senior naval officers. He restricted himself to male sitters. The formula he adopted for most of his head-and-shoulder portraits may be seen in Sir William Herschel (1785; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich): the body is parallel to the picture plane, and the sitter’s head is moved into three-quarter profile, as if his attention has been suddenly distracted. His style is crisp but scratchy in technique, and often the anatomy of his figures is inaccurate. In later portraits, such as those of fellow artists Francesco Bartolozzi (c. 1792; London, Tate) or Joseph Nollekens (1797; National Portrait Gallery), the sitter’s hand or some attribute balances the movement of the head. Abbott’s portraits were engraved by, among others, Valentine Green, Joseph Skelton and William Walker. Abbott painted an number of portraits of Admiral Nelson and attained immortal fame with his iconic portrait of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson (currently hanging in the Terracotta Room of the British Prime Minister’s residence at No. 10 Downing Street). Nelson gave Abbott two sittings at Greenwich and at the original one, Nelson was in considerable pain at that time from the amputation of his right arm, which was seriously wounded at the Battle of Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Nelson’s face shows the marks of illness, fatigue and the strain of long periods at sea. Abbott produced several variations of the original portrait, updating Nelson’s decorations and appearance as appropriate. In his heydey, Nelson acquired something of a reputation for vanity, which sometimes got the better of his dignity. Caricaturists such as James Gillray had some sport with his desire to cover himself in medals and orders. When presented with a ‘Chelengk’, (a plume of triumph with 13 diamond-encrusted sprays representing the French ships at the Battle of Nile set around a rotating central diamond) by the Sultan of Turkey after that battle, he insisted on wearing it pinned on his hat. The decoration contained a small mechanical device that when wound, made its centre rotate in a clockwise direction. In 1798 Abbott was an unsuccessful candidate for Associateship of the Royal Academy. Overwork led to anxiety and progressed to mental instability, allegedly as a result of his failure to keep up with the pace of the commissions flooding into his studio and in consequence of domestic disquiet. In 1798 Abbott was declared insane and placed under the care of Dr Thomas Munro (1759-1833), chief physician to Bethlem Hospital and a specialist in mental disorders. (Munro was one of the doctors who had treated the insanity of King George III). However, he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy for two further years. Several of his works were probably finished by another hand. Abbott died in London on 5 December 1802. Notwithstanding, Abbott’s depiction of the entrepreneur Matthew Boulton (Birmingham City Art Gallery) is as dignified a portrait as any of that era and his bleak portrait of the ironmaster John Wilkinson may be found in the collection of Wrexham County Borough Museum. His paintings Henry Byne, of Carshalton and Portrait of the Engraver Francesco Bartolozzi may be found in the collection of the Tate, London. A substantial number of Abbott’s portraits may be found in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Ten of his portraits of great captains and admirals executed in the style of the time may be found in the collection of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. These include the portraits of three most gallant sailors of the Napoleonic era: Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Calder, Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley and Nelson’s old ‘sea-daddy’ Captain William Locker.